Guy Debord: New Afterword by the AuthorThis is the first serious intellectual biography of Guy Debord, prime mover of the Situationist International (1957-1972) and author of The Society of the Spectacle, perhaps the seminal book of May 1968 in France. Anselm Jappe rejects recent attempts to set Debord up as a "postmodern" icon, arguing that he was a social theorist in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition—not a precursor of Jean Baudrillard but an heir of the young Georg Lukács of History and Class Consciousness (1923). Neither hagiographical nor sectarian, Guy Debord places its subject squarely in his historical context: the politicizing Letterist and Situationist "anti-artists" who, in the European aftermath of World War II, sought to criticize and transcend the Surrealist legacy. The book offers a lively, critical, and unusually reliable account of Debord's "last avant-garde" on its way from radical bohemianism to revolutionary theory. Jappe also discusses Debord's films, which are largely inaccessible at present. This English language edition of the book has been revised by the author and features an updated critical bibliography of Debord and the Situationists. |
Contents
The SpectacleHighest Stage of Abstraction | 5 |
Debord and Lukács | 19 |
The Practice of Theory | 45 |
The Situationists and Art | 63 |
The Situationists and the Sixties | 81 |
and After | 99 |
The Spectacle Twenty Years On | 117 |
The Aporias of the Subject and the Prospects for Action | 135 |
Two Sources and Two Aspects of Debords Theory | 148 |
Afterword to the EnglishLanguage Edition | 161 |
| 175 | |
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Common terms and phrases
activity alienation André Breton artistic Asger Jorn asserts avant-garde become Berréby bord bourgeois capitalism capitalist Castoriadis Champ Libre Class Consciousness Comm commodity concept critical critique culture Dérive desire détournement economy essence everyday evoked exchange-value existence fact fetishism film France French Gallimard Gérard Lebovici girum Guy Debord Hegel Hegelian Henri Lefebvre History and Class human ideas images individual Internationale Situationniste Isou Jorn kind later Lefebvre Lefebvre's Letterist International lived Lukács Lukács's Marx Marx's Marxism means merely modern movement never notion object organization Paris philosophy political possible Potlatch production proletariat Rapp reality reification revolution revolutionary role sense SI's Situationist International situations social Socialisme ou Barbarie society specta spectacle spectacular sphere struggle Surrealism Surrealists theory things thought tion tionist traditional trans transcend transformed unitary urbanism use-value workers writing young Letterists